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Monday, February 25, 2013

Obama’s Al Sharpton Myopia

Last week, the Weekly Standard reported that Al Sharpton met with the president to give advice on the economy:

Barack Obama met with Al Sharpton and other "African American leaders" to discuss the president's "plan to strengthen the economy for the middle class and continue to build ladders of opportunity for those striving to get there," according to the White House.

This is not the first time the MSNBC host has met with/given advice to the president, but the question becomes why?Why is Barack Obama, who is supposed to be the leader of the entire country, meeting with a man with such a history of hatred?

Syndicated columnist Stanley Crouch seemed to justify the action in a column earlier this week by saying there is a new Sharpton:

I had to explain all this to a young black scholar who dismissed the reverend with the charge of being a sellout because he now has access to President Obama and espouses mainstream liberal views on MSNBC.

I told him that Sharpton has evolved in a number of ways over the years, maturing and recognizing complexity. None of that excuses his shameful participation in the Tawana Brawley mess, a big lie that pimped historical black female suffering to new levels of hustle and sentimentality.

But Sharpton has changed impressively in the quarter century since. He has done something quite remarkable, adhering to the nonviolent activism of King while disengaging himself from academic militants like Cornel West and aging separatists like Louis Farrakhan.

Mr. Crouch likens Sharpton to President Lyndon Johnson who "redeemed himself from being a segregationist, simply and powerfully, by signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965."

Crouch seems blind to the fact that Sharpton despite all of his bigotry, never did anything to apologize or redeem himself from his racial and anti-Semitic deeds.

Sharpton never apologized for Tawana Brawley or slandering DA Pagones with the unfounded charge that Pagones was the rapist. In fact he refused to apologize saying:

“I did what I believed. They are asking me to grovel. They want black children to say they forced a black man coming out of the hard-core ghetto to his knees….Once you begin bending, it’s ‘did you bend today?’ or ‘I missed the apology, say it again.’ Once you start compromising, you lose respect for yourself.”

Sharpton never apologize for saying the "Central Park Jogger" was raped by her boyfriend and leading demonstrations calling the victim who was raped and beaten to within a hair of death a whore.

He certainly never apologized for the anti-Semitic Pogrom he led at Crown Heights. How he helped to build tensions with his now famous comment

If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house

How he added fuel to the already started violence by spreading a rumor thatthe Hasidic ambulance crew had ignored the dying black child in favor of treating the Jewish men (the cops at the scene told the driver who to pick up).

Sharpton never even apologized for his actions on the second night of violence. According to the sworn testimony of Efraim Lipkind, a former Hasidic resident of Crown Heights, Sharpton started agitating the crowd.

“Then we had a famous man, Al Sharpton, who came down, and he said Tuesday night, kill the Jews, two times. I heard him, and he started to lead a charge across the street to Utica.”

This is the man who has been rehabilitated by the White House and the press, despite never acknowledging his actions inciting the anti-Semitic violence atFreddy's Fashion Mart which ended in the firebombing deaths of Angelina Marrero, Cynthia Martinez, Luz Ramos, Mayra Rentas, Olga Garcia, Garnette Ramautar ,and Kareem Brunner.

Freddy’s had a Jewish owner and Sharpton didn’t like the fact that an African-American-owned record store was losing its lease and blamed it on Freddy’s. The fact that the fashion mart was not the landlord and had nothing to do with the record store didn’t matter to Sharpton.

At a rally recorded on Sept. 9, Mr. Sharpton is heard telling a crowd:

"I want to make it clear to the radio audience and to you here that we will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business on 125th Street.

Ironically Sharpton was the interloper, he was living in Hollis Queens at around the time Freddy's opened in Harlem and living in New Jersey when Freddy's was burned down.

When other white-owned businesses fled the neighborhood as the population became more African-American, Fred Harari the owner of Freddy's continued to serve the neighborhood.

But this supposedly changed man Al Sharpton led protests beginning in August and on the morning of Friday, December 8th when Roland James Smith, Jr., who had been part of the Sharpton's protests, walked into Freddy's Fashion Mart, pulled out a gun, ordered all the black customers to leave, spilled paint thinner on several bins of clothing and set them on fire -- a fire that resulted in killing 7 people plus Smith. The only African American left in the store was Freddy's security guard Kareem Brunner, 22-years-old, who was ordered to stay in the by the mass murderer Smith.

Al Sharpton cannot be forgiven for his role in the pogrom at Freddy’s or any of his other bigotry because he has never acknowledged his role, nor has he ever apologized (even though his actions/speeches, etc. were caught on tape).

According to Barack Obama he Sharpton has been rehabilitated enough to give advice to the president. According to Stanley Crowder of the Daily News he is a changed man.

Al Sharpton is a Baptist Minister who to this day regularly breaks the ninth commandment,Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor, and he has incited riots that lead to the deaths of innocents.

A real preacher would not have incited violence but called for peace. A real “changed man” would have waited for the truth before leading protests as he did as recently as this summer in the tragic case of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. A real “changed man” would admit his wrongdoings and apologize for inciting hatred.

Al Sharpton is no “changed man” but he has been rewarded for his lack of remorse with an undeserved halo of respectability by the likes by MSNBC, Stanley Crouch and by the President of the United States.